First at all, I think the .NET is not a challenge
for the Open Source developers. It merely is
another Microsoft intent of imposing its standards.

It is clear that Andy Oram express the Microsoft
point of view. He begins with the Samba example
(lesson ?), where one knows that SMB is the worst
and poorest protocol in the PC world. The people
that wrote Samba did a big work, mainly because
the very inconsistencies between the diferent
versions of SMB, but that does not mean that the
protocol (or Samba) are the best solutions for
interconecting machines.

Andy says that Microsoft had a good idea with .NET.
But Microsoft NEVER had a good idea in a
technological sense (Sure, is a good idea in the
comercial sense). Microsoft always travels in the
caboose. If we think about Corba, about Apache+
Perl+PHP, Java, we see that Microsoft is now
doing a desperate effort establishing some kind
of new standards.

The discusion is always about standards, if the
standards will follow a Committee or the
interests of a Corporation.

Finally, I believe that programmers should not
use the CLI, or even let that the CLI appears in
any way inside Linux. For this reason, if Microsoft
buys with big bucks a 25% of Corel as a way to
introduce CLI or .NET or whatever in Linux, we
should not use Corel Linux any more. The CLI or
.NET in Linux only benefits Microsoft, and
threatens some Open Source equivalents iniciatives.

The component may be the wave of the future.
But not Microsoft components, please !!